Haruo Suekichi is a Japanese artist who specializes in making wonderful steampunk watches. In the past 12 years, Haruo has made some 7,000 watches - he started out selling them in the flea market, but now his watches are very collectible.

Chief Mag has an interview with the master watchmaker, who recounted an interesting tale of how he got the whole idea because he wanted to design a watch for a one-armed man:

at the flea market, a one-armed man came up to me. And he said to me, well, with only my left arm, I can't put on a watch. Wow, I thought, he's right...I wonder if I could make a watch like that? So I made - and you can see one upstairs in the showcase - I made a watch that you put your wrist in it and it shuts around your wrist.

There are those of us that have a connection to steam punk because we are not satified with everything shiny, made of plastic, and mass manufacutred, and those of us that are, satisfied to own apple computers, drive prius's, and live in a cookie cutter world. It is not that you have to enjoy the astetic or like the look of brass, but to marvel at the craftsmanship and inguenity of a item not made by a company on wall street but a man or woman that lives right down the street from you, that is what steampunk is about.